Thursday, March 28, AD 2024 3:38am

Losing a War to China

 

 

Sobering analysis from Kurt Schlichter, attorney, conservative commentator and retired Army Colonel:

 

Here’s how the Chinese win. First, they take out our satellites. You know the GPS location service on your phone? Satellites, which are easy to hit. Say “bye-bye” to much of the ability of our precision weapons to find their targets. Also up for destruction are the communications satellites we rely on to coordinate our operations. And then there is the Chinese cyberattack, not only on our military systems but on systems here at home that control civilian power, water and other logistics. A U.S military with no comms and no computers is essentially the Post Office with worse service. An America with a ruined internet is Somalia.

Then they hit our land bases on Guam, Okinawa and elsewhere with a blizzard of missiles, knocking them out and annihilating our aircraft on the ground. Maybe we could respond with B-2s flying from the continental United States. We have 19 whole combat-capable aircraft, assuming a 100% operational readiness rate, which is just not a thing. We might even take out a few missile batteries on the Chinese coast. We won’t know the difference though. As for our carriers, if they come to play, they are likely going to get sunk, and if they stay out of the fight, they are merely useless – assuming quiet diesel subs do not find and sink them.

This is not a surprise. We play wargames against the Chinese all the time, and we lose.

Much of this seems to be picking on the Navy, but that’s only because the Navy would take the lead in a fight against the Chinses in the Pacific. The other branches have similar issues with strategy, leadership and equipment. So, what is the answer? The answer may well be to reframe the question – instead of determining our objectives and then failing to provide the capabilities to achieve them, maybe we need to decide what capabilities we are willing to provide and form our strategic objectives to meet those realities. Moreover, we need to get it through our heads that no one is going to be as dumb as Saddam was and conveniently fight us the way we want to be fought. We need a complete strategic mindset revolution, one that moves from a few super-expensive systems to many affordable ones. We need to say good-bye to legacies of the 20th century, like mostly manned combat aircraft and a few huge carrier battle groups. We need to prepare to defeat the enemy we actually face, not the enemy we want to face.

Go here to read the disturbing rest.  We haven’t had a true Navy war in 74 years.  Our strategic setup is more attuned to the technology and foes of 1941 than the technology and foes of 2019.  Since Vietnam we have faced hopelessly weak adversaries and struggled to defeat them, unless they were led by a complete moron, Saddam, that is your cue.  China has its own weaknesses, including food supply, third rate technology, lack of allies and internal unrest, that we could exploit long term.  However, a short term devastating defeat could be a permanent defeat for a divided country that cherishes victimhood, grievances and ease above all else. Anyone know a country like that?  Personally, I think we would still rise to the challenge and ultimately leave China defeated and devastated.  However, pessimists have a lot of good arguments.

 

0 0 votes
Article Rating
15 Comments
Oldest
Newest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
OrdinaryCatholic
OrdinaryCatholic
Thursday, March 21, AD 2019 5:54am

If our position in this world is so precarious then I will continue to support a Trumpian presidency than Clintonian, warts and all.

CAM
CAM
Thursday, March 21, AD 2019 7:34am

Another factor: Thanks to 16 years of Clinton/Obama presidencies the CHICOMs have acquired a good bit of US military and industrial intelligence. How much (that we know of) will never be made public.

Tom Byrne
Tom Byrne
Thursday, March 21, AD 2019 8:05am

You know, we’ve been through this before and we’ve always found (surprise) that we overestimated the enemy’s material abilities. The Soviet Army was found, upon reflection, to be a shell with a tough exterior. The Germans and Japanese never came close to matching us in production. Let’s not lose our heads, OK? China’s not suicidal and the attacks you describe risk a nuclear response.
I will agree that the threat seems most real for the next decade, after which China’s population plunge is going drastically shrink the Red Army. Without enough boots to put on the ground: no empire.

Philip
Philip
Thursday, March 21, AD 2019 10:21am

“However, a short term devastating defeat could be a permanent defeat for a divided country that cherishes victimhood, grievances and ease above all else. Anyone know a country like that?” DM

Would the country rally together, mend fences in order to save the Republic?
We are not the 1941 America. We had differences between us but our differences today seem so irreconcilable.

A resident in our home just told me that Time magazine is featuring AOC. Cover too of course. The left is hell bent on destroying US. China will have to take a number. Hillary has probably done more to sabotage our nation as Madam Secretary than any turncoat that walked on this blessed Nation.
Wiped the Server … lost e-mails…
and yet over half of the popular vote went her way.

A war might be the only way to get the criminals into jail.

T. Shaw
T. Shaw
Thursday, March 21, AD 2019 10:57am

A possible war with China is be less destructive to our country and way of life than a Demokrat win in the 2020 presidential election.

Greg Mockeridge
Greg Mockeridge
Thursday, March 21, AD 2019 12:44pm

Our lack of understanding of the need for a strong blue water Navy is something the ChiComs are only too eager to exploit. Bill Gertz wrote extensively about China’s effectiveness in stealing secrets from the Navy back in the early 2000s.

Sean
Sean
Thursday, March 21, AD 2019 3:19pm

I won’t disagree.
But after the war that the Chinese win, What, specifically, have they gained? They benefit how in crippling the major buyer of Chinese manufactured products?

Ernst Schreiber
Ernst Schreiber
Thursday, March 21, AD 2019 4:00pm

What, specifically, have they gained?

A reduction in their surplus male population?

Penguins Fan
Penguins Fan
Thursday, March 21, AD 2019 5:26pm

Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan….different wars, different results.

We did not want another world war with Communist China allied with the Soviet Union, which is why the Korean War ended the way it did. Allowing the Communists into the Korean peninsula was a massive, gave error. Not supporting the nationalists in China was another.

If the stupid French had let Indochina go after WWII, then there would not have been a Vietnam War. Given that the USA never lost a major battle and had run the NVa out of south Vietnam by 1972, a few Army and Air force bases in the South would have guaranteed the South’s independence. But, no, thanks to Walter Cronkite, the SDS, etc. we have been told we lost the Vietnam War. What was lost was perception.

Afghanistan is a disaster of a country. The US would not have been there had Bill Clinton accepted Sudan’s offer of Bin Laden.
Grab him, put him on a plane and throw his but off over the Atlantic. Problem solved.

Wanna hurt China? Stop buying their junk.

Ernst Schreiber
Ernst Schreiber
Thursday, March 21, AD 2019 7:51pm

Buh muh iPhone! I nee muh iPhone!

Mary De Voe
Friday, March 22, AD 2019 5:10am

China aborted all of their female babies wanting only males to support their aged parents. Some Americans, Clinton for instance, aborts anybody who moves. 65 million persons are aborted and we have nobody to replace them. Illegal invaders come here for handouts, not to serve.
China has more male babies, soldiers, then they know how to handle. There may be a war that even China cannot prevent.
Growing up we talked about ten persons supporting one social security recipient, then five supporters, then two. We talked about the yellow race overrunning the world through sheer numbers. (We did not have Iphones)
St. Thomas Aquinas talked about a war with a chance of winning. Jordan B. Peterson talks about a vocation from God that cannot fail because the vocation is from God and that God does not fail.
So, here we are. It is more than possible that China will try to take advantage of America.
Industrial and military espionage? Hell, yeah.
War? Yes.

WK Aiken
WK Aiken
Friday, March 22, AD 2019 6:57am

The scenarios painted by Mr. Schlichter are popular stuffing for the current spate of Tom Clancy-like pop-reads found for cheap on Amazon and Goodreads. One would hope that if back-porch pulp crankers can envision such, then high-placed military planners would be proportionately, as in exponentially, more immersed in the truth of it all.

That said, and I have absolutely no factual justification for this, I wonder if one of the reasons that the Left has remained so apoplectic since November 2016 is that, had the election turned out as predicted by the MSM, by now we’d be a Chinese “subsidiary” under a puppet rule by the Clinton dynasty. Since this didn’t come about, the supposed beneficiaries of the deal are doing all they can to make this presidency merely a delay in plans. Once they’re firmly back on track then all bets are off and they can do as they wish, Constitution-be-damned. Free stuff, guaranteed jobs, guns grabbed, churches closed, all the sex you can handle and abortions on demand – multitudes of useful idiots are more than ready to say “America – pfft!” It might even explain why the whole Russia thing is being perpetuated when it’s just so obviously (sorry) a red herring.

Again, I’m sure this is just me musing on my own potential pulp output, but the Rule of Ducks seems to apply. Maybe that’s a good title.

Tom Byrne
Tom Byrne
Friday, March 22, AD 2019 9:15am

WK:
A Chinese victory might be “pulp” but the attempt might not. Kaiser Wilhelm was advised not to invade France, Hitler not to invade Russia, and many in the Japanese military dreaded confronting us. We need to evaluate what WE think China can do and also find out what THEY think they can do. Any difference makes war more likely.

Mary:
War, yes, but with whom? Chinese history is chockfull of internal revolts and civil wars that lasted decades. If these Chinese men are angry that they can never have a woman, how long do you think it will be before they discern the real reason and the real culprit? We worry about a subject population propagandized by a corrupt government, but the history of the USSR reveals that enough people saw through enough of those lies to built resentment. The mass of the people became somewhat reconciled to the tyrants, but they were never completely fooled.

Mary De Voe
Friday, March 22, AD 2019 3:49pm

Tom Byrne:
” The mass of the people became somewhat reconciled to the tyrants, but they were never completely fooled.”
I hope and pray.

Discover more from The American Catholic

Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.

Continue reading

Scroll to Top